Genesis creation narrative

The Genesis creation myth contained in the first two chapters of the Bible's Book of Genesis is made up of two consecutive narratives:

Chapter 1 describes the creation of the world by divine speech in six days. Man and woman are created to be God's regents over this new creation. The first chapter culminates with the sanctification of the seventh day as the Biblical Sabbath. The second narrative tells of God's planting a garden in which he places the first man, and from whose rib (or side) he fashions the first woman.

Most contemporary biblical scholars see Genesis 1-2, with their strong Babylonian influence and anti-Babylonian agenda, as a product of the exilic and post-exilic period (6th-5th centuries BC). Medieval Jewish and Christian scholars drew various lessons from the text, including the oneness of mankind and the greatness of God as creator of the world ex nihilo; modern scholars have analysed its structural qualities and drawn attention to additional embedded messages, notably the role of God as the one who brings order to chaos.

The narratives

The Creation of Light by Gustave Dore.

God creating the land animals (Vittskövle Church fresco, 1480s).

The modern division of the Bible into chapters dates from c. AD 1200, and the division into verses somewhat later; the distinction between Genesis 1 and 2 is therefore a relatively recent development.

First narrative: Creation week

Genesis 1:1–2:4

The creation week narrative consists of eight divine commands executed over six days, followed by a seventh day of rest.

• First day: God creates light ("Let there be light!")Gen 1:3—the first divine command. The light is divided from the darkness, and "day" and "night" are named.
• Second day: God creates a firmament ("Let a firmament be...!")Gen 1:6–7—the second command—to divide the waters above from the waters below. The firmament is named "skies".
• Third day: God commands the waters below to be gathered together in one place, and dry land to appear (the third command).Gen 1:9–10 "Earth" and "sea" are named. God commands the earth to bring forth grass, plants, and fruit-bearing trees (the fourth command).
• Fourth day: God creates lights in the firmament (the fifth command)Gen 1:14–15 to separate light from darkness and to mark days, seasons and years. Two great lights are made (most likely the Sun and Moon, but not named), and the stars.
• Fifth day: God commands the sea to "teem with living creatures", and birds to fly across the heavens (sixth command)Gen 1:20–21 He creates birds and sea creatures, and commands them to be fruitful and multiply.
• Sixth day: God commands the land to bring forth living creatures (seventh command);Gen 1:24–25 He makes wild beasts, livestock and reptiles. He then creates mankind in His "image" and "likeness" (eighth command).Gen 1:26–28 They are told to "be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." Humans and animals are given plants to eat. The totality of creation is described by God as "very good."
• Seventh day: God, having completed the heavens and the earth, rests from His work, and blesses and sanctifies the seventh day.

Literary Bridge

Genesis 2:4

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

The phrase "These are the generations (Hebrew תוֹלְדוֹת; tôledôt) of the heavens and the earth when they were created" lies between the creation week account and the account of Eden which follows, and the first of ten phrases ("tôledôt") used to provide structure to the book of Genesis. Since the phrase always precedes the "generation" to which it belongs, the "generations of the heavens and the earth" should logically be taken to refer to Genesis 2; a position taken by most commentators. Nevertheless, other commentators from Rashi to the present day have argued that in this case it should apply to what precedes.

Second narrative: Eden

Genesis 2:4–25

Painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

The Eden narrative addresses the creation of the first man and woman:

• Genesis 2:4b—the second half of the bridge formed by the "generations" formula, and the beginning of the Eden narrative—places the events of the narrative "in the day when YHWH Elohim made the earth and the heavens..."
• Before any plant had appeared, before any rain had fallen, while a mist watered the earth, Yahweh formed the man (Heb. ha-adam הָאָדָם) out of dust from the ground (Heb. ha-adamah הָאֲדָמָה), and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. And the man became a "living being" (Heb. nephesh).
• Yahweh planted a garden in Eden and he set the man in it. He caused pleasant trees to spout from the ground, and trees necessary for food, also the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (An unnamed river is described: it goes out from Eden to water the garden, after which it parts into four named streams.) He takes the man who is to tend His garden and tells him he may eat of the fruit of all the trees except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in that day thou shalt surely die."
• Yahweh resolved to make a "helper" suitable for (lit. "corresponding to") the man. He made domestic animals and birds, and the man gave them their names, but none of them is a fitting helper. Therefore Yahweh caused the man to sleep, and he took a rib, and from it formed a woman. The man then named her "Woman" (Heb. ishah), saying "for from a man (Heb. ish) has this been taken." A statement instituting marriage follows: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
• The man and his wife were naked, and felt no shame.

Genesis 1-11: Primeval History

Genesis 1-2 opens the “primeval history” of Genesis 1-11. This unit within Genesis forms an introduction to the stories of Abraham and the Patriarchs, and contains the first mention of many themes which are continued throughout the book of Genesis and the Torah, including fruitfulness, God's election of Israel, and His ongoing forgiveness of man's rebellious nature. It is therefore impossible to understand either Genesis 1–2 or the Torah as a whole without reference to this introductory history.

Ancient Near East context

Civilizations of the Ancient Near East conceived the Earth as a flat disk with infinite water both above and below it. The dome of the sky, was thought to be a solid metal bowl—tin according to the Sumerians, iron for the Egyptians—separating the surrounding water from the habitable world. The stars were embedded in the under surface of this dome, and there were gates in it that allowed the passage of the Sun and Moon back and forth. The flat-disk Earth was seen as a single island-continent surrounded by a circular ocean, of which the known seas—what we call today the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea—were inlets. Beneath the Earth was a fresh-water sea, the source of all fresh-water rivers and wells. It is this world-view which lies behind the Genesis creation story.

The Genesis creation myth is comparable with other Near Eastern creation myths. According to the Enuma Elish, which has the closest parallels, the original state of the universe was a chaos formed by the mingling of two primeval waters, the female saltwater Tiamat and the male freshwater Apsu. Through the fusion of their waters six successive generations of gods were born. A war amongst the gods began with the slaying of Apsu, and ended with the god Marduk splitting Tiamat in two to form the heavens and the earth; the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers emerged from her eye-sockets. Marduk then created humanity, from clay mingled with spit and blood, to tend the Earth for the gods, while Marduk himself was enthroned in Babylon in the Esagila, "the temple with its head in heaven."

The similarities between Genesis and the Enuma Elish are apparent, but there are significant differences. The most notable is the absence from Genesis of the "divine combat" (the gods' battle with Tiamat) which secures Marduk's position as king of the world, but even this has an echo in the claims of Yahweh's kingship over creation in such places as Psalm 29 and Psalm 93, where he is pictured as sitting enthroned over the floods.

Exegetical points

"In the beginning..."

The first word of Genesis 1 in Hebrew, "in the beginning" (Heb. b^erēšît בְּרֵאשִׁית), provides the traditional Jewish title for the book. The inherent ambiguity of the Hebrew grammar in this verse gives rise to two alternative translations, the first implying that God's initial act of creation was ab nihilo (out of nothing), the second that "the heavens and the earth" (i.e., everything) already existed in a "formless and empty" state, to which God brings form and order:

1. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void…. God said, Let there be light!" (King James Version).
2. "At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was (or the earth being) unformed and void.... God said, Let there be light!" (Rashi, and with variations Ibn Ezra and Bereshith Rabba).

The name of God

Two names of God are used, Elohim in the first account and Yahweh Elohim in the second account. In Jewish tradition, dating back to the earliest rabbinic literature, the different names indicate different attributes of God. In modern times the two names, plus differences in the styles of the two chapters and a number of discrepancies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, were instrumental in the development of source criticism and the documentary hypothesis.

"Without form and void"

The phrase traditionally translated in English "without form and void" is tōhû wābōhû (Template:Lang-he). The Greek Septuagint (LXX) rendered this term as "unseen and unformed" (Greek: ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος), paralleling the Greek concept of Chaos. In the Hebrew Bible, the phrase is a dis legomenon, being used only in one other place.Jer. 4:23 There Jeremiah is telling Israel that sin and rebellion against God will lead to "darkness and chaos," or to "de-creation," "as if the earth had been ‘uncreated.’"

The rûach of God

The Hebrew rûach (רוּחַ) has the meanings "wind, spirit, breath," but the traditional Jewish interpretation here is "wind," as "spirit" would imply a living supernatural presence co-extent with yet separate from God at Creation. This, however, is the sense in which rûach was understood by the early Christian church in developing the doctrine of the Trinity, in which this passage plays a central role.

The "deep"

The "deep" (Heb. תְהוֹם t^ehôm), is the formless body of primeval water surrounding the habitable world. These waters are later released during the great flood, when "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" from under the earth and from the "windows" of the sky.Gen. 7:11 The word is cognate with the Babylonian Tiamat, and its occurrence here without the definite article ha (i.e., the literal translation of the Hebrew is that "darkness lay on the face of t^ehôm) indicates its mythical origins.

The firmament of heaven

The "firmament" (Heb. רָקִיעַ rāqîa) of heaven, created on the second day of creation and populated by luminaries on the fourth day, denotes a solid ceiling which separated the earth below from the heavens and their waters above. The term is etymologically derived from the verb rāqa (רֹקַע ), used for the act of beating metal into thin plates.

Great sea monsters

Heb. hatanninim hagedolim (הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים) is the classification of creatures to which the chaos-monsters Leviathan and Rahab belong. In Genesis 1:21, the proper noun Leviathan is missing and only the class noun great tannînim appears. The great tannînim are associated with mythological sea creatures such as Lotan (the Ugaritic counterpart of the biblical Leviathan) which were considered deities by other ancient near eastern cultures; the author of Genesis 1 asserts the sovereignty of Elohim over such entities.

The number seven

Seven denoted divine completion. It is embedded in the text of Genesis 1 (but not in Genesis 2) in a number of ways, besides the obvious seven-day framework: the word "God" occurs 35 times (7 × 5) and "earth" 21 times (7 × 3). The phrases "and it was so" and "God saw that it was good" occur 7 times each. The first sentence of Genesis 1:1 contains 7 Hebrew words, and the second sentence contains 14 words, while the verses about the seventh dayGen. 2:1–3 contain 35 words in total.

Man and the image of God

The meaning of the "image of God" has been much debated. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria and the medieval Jewish scholar Rashi believed it referred to "a sort of conceptual archetype, model, or blueprint that God had previously made for man;" his colleague Maimonides suggested it referred to man's free will. Modern scholarship still debates whether the image of God was represented symmetrically in Adam and Eve, or whether Adam possessed the image more fully than the woman.

Structure and composition

Michelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel shows the creation of the stars and planets as described in the first chapter of Genesis.

Structure

See also: Framework interpretation

Genesis 1 consists of eight acts of creation within a six day framework. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: Day one divides the darkness from light; day two, the waters from the skies; and day three, the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates what was created on day one, and heavenly bodies are placed in the darkness and light; day five populates what was created on day two, and fish and birds are placed in the seas and skies; finally, day six populates what was created on day three, and animals and man are place on the land. This six-day structure is symmetrically bracketed: On day zero primeval chaos reigns, and on day seven there is cosmic order.

Genesis 2 is a simple linear narrative, with the exception of the parenthesis about the four rivers at 2:10–14. This interrupts the forward movement of the narrative and is possibly a later insertion.

The two are joined by Genesis 2:4a, "These are the tôl^edôt (תוֹלְדוֹת in Hebrew) of the heavens and the earth when they were created." This echoes the first line of Genesis 1, "In the beginning Yahweh created both the heavens and the earth," and is reversed in the next line of Genesis 2, "In the day when Yahweh Elohim made the earth and the heavens...". The significance of this, if any, is unclear, but it does reflect the preoccupation of each chapter, Genesis 1 looking down from heaven, Genesis 2 looking up from the earth.

Composition

Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam (1512) is the most famous Fresco in the Sistine Chapel

According to the tradition the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses, but today many scholars accept that the Pentateuch "was in reality a composite work, the product of many hands and periods.” In the first half of the 20th century the dominant theory regarding its origins was the documentary hypothesis, which supposes that the Torah was produced about 450 BC by combining four distinct, complete and coherent documents, with Genesis 1 from one source (called Priestly source [P]), and Genesis 2 from another (Jahwist [J]). Since the last quarter of the 20th century there has been renewed interest in alternative theories which see [P] (Genesis 1) as an editor adding to an existing [J] document, rather than as a complete and independent document; like the documentary hypothesis, contemporary theories also see Genesis 1-2, with their strong Babylonian influence and anti-Babylonian agenda, as a product of the exilic and post-exilic period (6th-5th centuries BC). The renewed emphasis on the final form of the biblical text has also tended to redirect attention to its overarching theological coherence.

Theology and interpretation

Questions of genre

The genre of Genesis 1-2 (and Genesis 1–11, the larger whole to which the two chapters belong) remains subject to differences of opinion, and modern scholars can only make informed judgments. One inevitable conclusion is that Genesis 1-2 represent theology: the chapters concern the actions of God and the meaning of those acts. Possibly, the authors also believed they were writing a scientific, accurate description of the cosmos and its beginnings as known to them: a flat earth surrounded by infinite water and a solid sky-dome set with stars. A recent study of the numerological basis of Genesis speculated about the authors' possible intentions to give "a scientific description of Creation from the perspective of ritual, and without myth." The story is also presented with a clear chronological progression as part of a history that leads from the moment of first creation to the destruction of the First Temple. This led Thorkild Jacobsen to classify it as "mythical history".

The theology of Genesis 1-2

Traditional Jewish scholarship has viewed it as expressing spiritual concepts (see Nachmanides, commentary on Genesis). The Mishnah in Tractate Chagigah states that the actual meaning of the creation account, mystical in nature and hinted at in the text of Genesis, was to be taught only to advanced students one-on-one. Tractate Sanhedrin states that Genesis describes all mankind as being descended from a single individual in order to teach certain lessons. Among these are:

• Taking one life is tantamount to destroying the entire world, and saving one life is tantamount to saving the entire world.
• A person should not say to another that he comes from better stock because we all come from the same ancestor.
• To teach the greatness of God, for when human beings create a mold every thing that comes out of that mold is identical, while mankind, which comes out of a single mold, is different in that every person is unique.

Among the many views of modern scholars on Genesis and creation one of the most influential is that which links it to the emergence of Hebrew monotheism from the common Mesopotamian/Levantine background of polytheistic religion and myth around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The "Creation week" narrative forms a monotheistic polemic on creation-theology directed against pagan creation myths, the sequence of events building to the establishment of the Biblical Sabbath (in Hebrew: שַׁבָּת, Shabbat) commandment as its climax. Where the Babylonian myths saw man as nothing more than a "lackey of the gods to keep them supplied with food," Genesis starts out with God approving the world as "very good" and with mankind at the apex of created order.Gen. 1:31 Things then fall away from this initial state of goodness: Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree in disobedience of the divine command. Ten generations later in the time of Noah, the Earth has become so corrupted that God resolves to return it to the waters of chaos sparing only one man who is righteous and from whom a new creation can begin.

Creationism

See also: Creationism and Creation-evolution controversy

Creationism springs from the belief that if one element of the biblical narrative is shown to be untrue, then all others will follow: "Tamper with the Book of Genesis and you undermine the very foundations of Christianity.... If Genesis 1 is not accurate, then there's no way to be certain that the rest of Scripture tells the truth." Thus a literal genre, Genesis as history, is substituted for the symbolic Genesis as theology, and the text is placed in conflict with science. "Young Earth" creationists believe that the seven "days" of Genesis 1 correspond to normal 24-hour days while Day-age creationists, more willing to adjust their religious beliefs to accommodate current scientific findings, hold that each "day" represents an "age" of perhaps millions or even billions of years. Creationists read Genesis 2 as history, holding that God breathed into the nostrils of a being formed out of dust, and from his side (or rib) the first woman was formed.

See also

• Biblical criticism
• Creation myth
• Documentary hypothesis
• Enuma Elish
• Hexameron
• Sacred history
• Timeline of the Bible

Bibliography

• Anderson, Bernhard W. Creation in the Old Testament (editor) (ISBN 0-8006-1768-1)
• Anderson, Bernhard W. Creation Ver Bernhard W. Understanding the Old Testament (ISBN 0-13-948399-3)
• Benware, P.N. "Survey of the Old Testament," Moody Press, Chicago IL, (1993).
• Bloom, Harold and Rosenberg, David The Book of J, Random House, NY, USA 1990.
• Davis, John, Paradise to Prison—Studies in Genesis, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975, p. 23
• Douglas, J.D. et al., "Old Testament Volume: New Commentary on the Whole Bible," Tyndale, Wheaton, IL, (1990)
• Friedman, Richard E. Who Wrote The Bible?, Harper and Row, NY, USA, 1987.
• Nicholson, E. The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Reis, Pamela Tamarkin (2001). Genesis as Rashomon: The creation as told by God and man. Bible Review '17' (3).
• Rouvière, Jean-Marc, (2006), Brèves méditations sur la création du monde L'Harmattan, Paris.
• Spurrell,G.J. Notes on the Text of the Book of Genesis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896.
• Tigay, Jeffrey, Ed. Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, USA 1986

External links

Sources for the Biblical text

• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (Hebrew-English text, translated according to the JPS 1917 Edition)
• Chpater 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 (Hebrew-English text, with Rashi's commentary. The translation is the authoritative Judaica Press version, edited by the esteemed translator and scholar, Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg.)
• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (King James Version)
• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (Revised Standard Version)
• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New Living Translation)
• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New American Standard Bible)
• Chapter 1 Chapter 2 (New International Version (UK))

Other resources

• Alexander Heidel, "Babylonian Genesis" A classic text, at Wikibooks
• "Enuma Elish", at Encyclopedia of the Orient Summary of Enuma Elish with links to full text.
• "Epic of Gilgamesh" (summary)
• Hexaemeron—Catholic Encyclopedia article
• Jacob Boehme's vision on Genesis His book Mysterium Magnum.
• Mark S. Smith, "The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts", Bible and Interpretation.
• Paul H. Seely, "The Firmament and the Water Above", The Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991) ANE cosmography
• Paul H. Seely, "The Geographical Meaning of 'Éarth' and 'Seas' in Genesis 1:10", Westminster Theological Journal 59 (1997)ANE cosmography.
• Religious practices in late 7th century Israel
• Review of Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (2005) Includes comments on parallels between ancient Mesopotamian literature and biblical texts.
• Review of James P. Allen, The Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005)
• Review of John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (2000).
• Six Days of Creation: Islamic View
• The Multiple Authorship of the Books Attributed to Moses